Senior Data Scientist, Code Modules – NZ Public Sector

New Zealand Government; Wellington; On-site; NZD 97,000 - 132,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Sick leave 15 days

End-of-year leave

Annual flu vaccines

Employee Assistance Programme

Health/vision/hearing benefits

Study assistance

KIWISAVER

Job summary

Stats NZ Tatauranga Aotearoa is seeking a Senior Data Scientist to lead hands-on development of reusable data products. You will deliver 15–30 new code modules yearly and maintain ~70 existing modules to support official statistics and research across government.

You will collaborate with the Principal Data Scientist and Technical Lead, advancing QA, documentation, and best practices while contributing to data innovation and platform transitions, including Databricks.

Qualifications

• A tertiary qualification in Data Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Operations Research, or a related field.
• Five+ years’ experience in quantitative or qualitative research, analytics, data science, or statistical analysis.
• Strong SQL and R programming skills.
• Experience developing robust, reusable analytical code and documentation.
• Strong attention to quality, testing, documentation, and continuous improvement.
• Ability to apply best practice and contribute ideas for improving methods, tools, and processes.
• Experience collaborating with technical stakeholders to solve complex problems.
• An understanding of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and a commitment to building knowledge of te ao Māori, tikanga Māori, and te reo Māori.
• Knowledge of integrated data environments such as the IDI, or experience working with large administrative datasets, would be advantageous.
• Experience with Databricks or cloud-based analytics platforms would be beneficial.

Responsibilities

• Hands-on development delivering 15 to 30 new or upgraded code modules each year across the lifecycle from inception to deployment.
• Maintain and improve an existing library of approximately 70 modules to stay fit-for-purpose.
• Identify opportunities to streamline development processes and improve documentation standards.
• Support transition of Code Modules capability into future-state environments including Databricks.
• Contribute to a workspace at the intersection of research, data science, and official statistics across government and the wider research community.

Skills

Data science

SQL

R programming

Code module development

Documentation

QA/testing

Stakeholder comms

Te Tiriti knowledge

Large datasets

Databricks

Education

Data Science/Statistics degree

Tools

Databricks

Job description

Stats NZ Tatauranga Aotearoa is seeking a Senior Data Scientist to lead hands-on development of reusable data products. You will deliver 15–30 new code modules yearly and maintain ~70 existing modules to support official statistics and research across government.

You will collaborate with the Principal Data Scientist and Technical Lead, advancing QA, documentation, and best practices while contributing to data innovation and platform transitions, including Databricks.